rds, and the like, when, at the sight of a certain view, Barber
bent over the picture and became absorbed.

"I have been there," he said.

The others looked at him with polite curiosity and a little wonder. To
pass it off I began to mock.

"No," he persisted, "I have seen it."

"Yes, at the moving-pictures."

But he began to talk rapidly and explain. I could see that the gentleman
and his wife were interested and quite puzzled. It would seem that the
place he described--Naples, I think it was--resembled broadly the place
they knew, but with so many differences of detail as to be almost
unrecognizable. It was, as Mrs. W. said afterward, "like a city
perceived in a dream--all the topsy-turvydom, all the mingling of
fantasy and reality."

After outbursts of this kind, he was generally ill--at least he kept his
bed and slept much. As a consequence, he was often away from the office;
and whenever I thought of him in those days, I used to wonder how he
managed to keep his employment.

One foggy evening in January, about eight o'clock, I happened to be
walking with Barber in the West End. We passed before a concert hall,
brilliantly lighted, with a great crowd of people gathered about the
doors, and I read on a poster that a concert of classical music was
forward at which certain renowned artists were to appear. I really
cannot give any sort of reason why I took it into my head to go in. I am
rather fond of music, even of the kind which requires a distinct
intellectual effort; but I was not anxious to hear music that night, and
in any case, Barber was about the last man in the world I should have
chosen to hear it with. When I proposed that we should take tickets, he
strongly objected.

"Just look me over," he said. "I ain't done anything to you that you
want to take my life, have I? I know the kind of merry-go-round that
goes on in there, and I'm not having any."

I suppose it was his opposition which made me stick to the project, for
I could not genuinely have cared very much, and there was nothing to be
gained by dragging Barber to a concert against his will. Finally, seeing
I was determined, he yielded, though most ungraciously.

"It'll be the chance of a lifetime for an hour's nap," he said as we
took our seats, "if they only keep the trombone quiet."

I repeat his trivial sayings to show how little there was about him in
manner or speech to prepare me for what followed.

I remember that the first number on